Biography

In the past few years, Dage devoted herself exclusively to painting. Her artwork is the result of her quest. Her paintings are the results of her studies and experiments in an attempt to grab the elusory; the energy, to capture and express the essence of life, the energy that lies within. Dage chooses her subjects based on emotion and energy.

Born in 1967 in Montreal, she has a happy youth. Very young she shows a keen interest in drawing. Her parents give her the opportunity to study arts and, at the age of ten, she made her first steps as an artist. Just like many others, she learns to paint by copying great masters’.

Later, in spite of the career counsellor’s advice, she goes to college and undertakes her study in arts. It is of utmost importance for her to study something that later she will love to work with. She does not know exactly where that would bring her, but she knows it was the way to go in order to end up doing what she loves to do. She develops her knowledge of painting and drawing. She also explores new techniques, different aspects of visual arts, from painting to collage, through the creation of three-dimensional works. But it is in the pictorial works that she excels in and she chooses to concentrate her effort there.

Subsequently she obtains a Bachelor’s degree in Design at the “Université du Québec à Montréal”. This academic formation allows her to progress and to increase her knowledge and highly develops her critical sense of aesthetic. She develops an extraordinary sense of observation.

After university, she works as a graphic designer for several years. However, the urge to create, to express herself, to paint comes back. She creates murals. It is not work anymore, it is painting. For nearly 10 years, she designs and produces murals, mainly for children’s rooms, for the great pleasure of youth and old.

Although this work is pleasant, it is no longer enough for her; she has to go deeper, she has to create. On a beautiful Saturday morning, she bought her first painters’ canvas, a very large canvas, as she feels the need of very large surfaces to express her emotions.

She is already playing with paint filaments while creating murals. In fact, these paint drips lead her to experiment creating a painting using paint drips. She starts experimenting, creating textures, mixing paints and mediums and finally found this trait, this defining characteristic of her artistic language. She finds her signature: “The Intentional Dripping”.

Dage uses dripping to express herself. A technique that the famous American painter Jackson Pollock (also known as Jack the Dripper) created in the 50’s. She uses acrylic paint because of its fluidity and its rich color palette. The energy used for the production of artwork is almost palpable. The uninterrupted movement that can be observed following the lines of paint allows makes it possible for us to imagine the intensity, the presence of the artist when she creates.

Dage does not in any way seek to reproduce the real world. Her faces, trees and even bodies are created to let the emotions speak beyond abstract, they become an integral part of her work.

On many paintings a strong splash of paint can be seen. That is for Dage an even more intense charge of emotion transferred into her paintings. That last splash is more than just paint. It symbolizes the rupture between the intentional dripping and the hazardous, impulsive desire to scream out loud the raw emotion.